Figure of the foreign service of the evening daily life, where he had entered in 1972, he ensured correspondence in Israel and then in the United Kingdom, before joining the “Radio-Television” supplement as a columnist. It died on May 5, at the age of 74.
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Our colleague, Francis Cornu, had immediately matured his dream of youth: to join the editorial staff of the world, the only newspaper where he burned to assert himself. He will draw all his professional career there, for more than thirty-six years. Francis Cornu died on Thursday May 5 in Paris, following a stroke. He was 74 years old.
Born July 26, 1947 in Pont-l’Evêque (Calvados), a brilliant student in a Catholic high school in Lisieux, Francis Cornu joined the journalists training center (CFJ) in 1967, from where he leaves, three years Later, at the top of his promotion. His two cadet brothers, admiring, remember that he was in their eyes, “the major”.
This feat takes him a passport for the rue des Italiens, historic headquarters of the world, where he completed his end -of -studies internship. Rare thing, at the time, for a trainee, it was authorized to sign his first article, a report on Portuguese workers in France. Jacques Fauvet, director of the world, promises to hire him upon his return from Dakar, where he tried his pen, as cooperating, in the columns of the Senegalese daily Le Soleil. But, for lack of budget, Francis Cornu will have to wait eight months – hence his flash passage to the writing of Le Figaro – before being able to link his fate in the world in October 1972.
corresponding in Israel
Assigned for six years to the Justice-Police section, he discovered all the mysteries. He walks the rooms of the lost steps of the courthouses, rubs shoulders with investigators and lawyers, describes the evolution of the judiciary, visit prisons and psychiatric hospitals, pleads for a “modernization” of the divorce, comments criminal affairs and tells the hearings From some great trials of the time, like those of Christian Ranucci, guillotined for the murder of a little girl, or Pierre Goldman, far -left activist who sank in banditry.
In 1973, Francis Cornu recounts a dark affair of Krach Immobilier in Ajaccio where a notary considers himself defamed by an article, whose author has however content to report the grievances of injured customers. The justice, pointillary, condemns Le Monde. Amount to the front in the columns of the newspaper, Jacques Fauvet then writes on Francis Cornu the most beautiful compliments: “He served the truth and morality.”
Over the years, Francis Cornu wants to expand his horizon. It is sent several times to Lebanon torn apart by civil war. In May 1978, he was appointed correspondent in Israel where he stayed five years. The Hebrew state still lives in the euphoria of the trip to Jerusalem of the Egyptian president, Anouar El-Sadate, in a prelude to the Camp David agreements. But the settlement of the Palestinian question is bogged down and the Israeli settlers take root in the West Bank. Francis Cornu recounts the rise of tensions in the occupied territories, the repercussions in Israel of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the invasion of South Lebanon and the questioning of Tsahal in the massacres of Sabra and Chatila which will lead, a year later , to the resignation of the Prime Minister, Menahem Begin.
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